Disaster,Displacement, and Casework: Uncertainty and Assistance after Hurricane Katrina

Casework in the United States in social welfare programs has been limited in what caseworkers can do, as what they do has been tightly structured by rules. Recently, scholars have argued that episodic assistance in disaster brings sympathy in public policy more than restriction. The sympathy after disaster brings new money, and individual assistance is in turn the subject of casework. This article relies upon interviews, observations, and government documents to assess how casework served displaced people after Hurricane Katrina. The article finds that caseworkers after Katrina were caught in a program that would end at some uncertain time, and with new and unclear rules that changed frequently, making the sympathy difficult to enact for many of the poorest people. Casework after disaster is episodic and convened by nonprofits and, after Katrina, paid for by a large grant and then written into statute. Assistance for displaced people is likely to continue, given the expectation of more disasters and rising sea levels. The question of how it is like or unlike other forms of assistance and what sympathy in policy means in helping displaced people is therefore likely to continue to matter.     

Australia’s Army Nurse: Locating a Woman as the Heart of Sacrifice in the Hall of Memory

This article contests the misconception that the Hall of Memory of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, represents an irreligious space. While accommodating the expectations of a post-secular society, this belief fails to recognise the influence of Christianity upon the generation that experienced World War I and developed the memorial practices that arose in response to it. Veteran-artist M. Napier Waller embedded complex religious symbolism in the scheme of three windows he designed and executed for the hall. Drawing on his individual experience of battle, personal philosophy of art and the medieval customs of his forebears, Waller told the story of Australia’s experience of the war and aligned a nation’s sacrifice with that of Christ: His Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension are symbolised in the south, west and east windows, respectively. The inclusion of a nurse was central to Waller’s plans and required he manipulate the men creating the memorial to achieve his goal. In doing so, he neutralised the greatest threat to his vision: its founder, Charles Bean, and located a woman of many identities—a Martial Madonna—as the heart of national sacrifice in Australia’s premier war memorial.     

What Executioners Can—and Cannot—Teach Us About the Death Penalty

Those who work with the condemned often come to reject the death penalty not only in individual cases, and not only on the ground that it is poorly implemented. They tend to conclude that the punishment is wrong. I argue that the perspective of the executioner helps illuminate the debate about whether to abolish capital punishment, and that indeed the perspective of those who work with the condemned raises the troubling possibility that support for the death penalty can survive only at a great remove. Jeffrie Murphy has also argued that the executioner’s perspective can be useful, but I contend that Murphy asks the wrong question. His essay considers whether an executioner may, under some circumstances, take pride in his work. The better question is whether anyone ought to be asked to do such work. On this latter question, the perspective of the executioner sheds important light. Like Murphy, I draw on works by and about Albert Pierrepoint, the “last hangman” of Britain. I also draw on the perspectives of numerous executioners, wardens, chaplains, and other death row personnel. I argue that their perspectives offer a powerful argument against the main rationale for the death penalty: retribution. If retribution is keyed to the offender’s character as well as his wrongful act, then post-conviction character ought to matter. The executioners’ accounts share a common theme: that death row inmates change over time and hold the potential for redemption.     

Social Connections,Trajectories of Hopelessness,and Serious Violence in Impoverished Urban Youth

Youth living in impoverished urban neighborhoods are at risk for becoming hopeless about their future and engaging in violent behaviors. The current study seeks to examine the longitudinal relationship between social connections, hopelessness trajectories, and subsequent violent behavior across adolescence. Our sample included 723 (49% female) African American youth living in impoverished urban neighborhoods who participated in the Mobile Youth Survey from 1998 through 2006. Using general growth mixture modeling, we found two hopelessness trajectory classes for both boys and girls during middle adolescence: a consistently low hopelessness class and an increasingly hopeless class with quadratic change. In all classes, youth who reported stronger early adolescent connections to their mothers were less hopeless at age 13. The probability of later adolescent violence with a weapon was higher for boys and was associated with the increasingly hopeless class for both boys and girls. Implications for new avenues of research and design of hope-based prevention interventions will be discussed.     

Democracy,interrupted: Regime change and partisanship in twentieth-century Argentina

Electoral volatility is much higher in new than in advanced democracies. Some scholars contend that weak partisan ties among the electorate lie behind this high volatility. Political parties in new democracies do not invest in building strong linkages with voters, they claim; hence partisanship is not widespread, nor does it grow over time. Our view is that democratic processes do encourage the spread of partisanship and hence the stabilization of electoral outcomes over time in new democracies. But this dynamic can be masked by countervailing factors and cut short by regime instability. We expect that, all else being equal, volatility will decline over time as a new democracy matures but increase again when democracy is interrupted. We use disaggregated ecological data from Argentina over nearly a century to show that electoral stability grows during democratic periods and erodes during dictatorships.     

Pampered Sons, (Wo)manly Men,or Do‐nothing Machos? Costa Rican Men Coming of Age under Neoliberalism

This article explores how young men in Costa Rica negotiate ideas of manhood under neoliberalism. We draw on interview data involving 23 men, ages 15–35, residing in one Costa Rican city. Comparing men across three different class locations, we find diverse "markers of manhood." Our data suggest an emerging globally dominant masculine ideal among an elite class of men, a declining locally dominant masculine ideal among working-class men, and a cynical, possibly counter-cultural masculine ideal among poor men. We conclude that masculinities are not only fluid, but tied to changing economic circumstances and class structures.